“How can you be sure he saw anything?”
“He had to. He was there. He saw and he was ashamed, but he did not leave.”
I felt a surge of irritation for this pretty woman who was so angry at her dead husband.
“Paloma, was your husband paid well?”
“Sure, they paid him a lot to keep quiet about what he saw.”
“Maybe that’s why he didn’t leave. The money was for his family.”
“That is true. He always brought his pay to me.”
“What will you do now?”
She lowered her eyes again. “We will go home now. All of us, Jochim and his family too. Maybe we will start a business together.”
Something furtive and sly in her expression made me sit up straighter. “A business?”
She gave a little toss of her head. “Jochim is smart. We could do that.”
Keeping my eyes fixed on my meat loaf, I said, “Takes a lot of money to start a business.”
In a proud rush, she said, “That won’t be a problem now.”
“Ramón had insurance?”
“I shouldn’t tell you—Jochim will kill me if he knows I told—but it’s the way you said, Ramón did love me. He had to, or he wouldn’t have provided for us so well. With the insurance money, we can go home and have a good life.”
Her eyes sparkled with happy anticipation, for a moment forgetting the source of her new wealth.
I said, “I take it you’ve already contacted the insurance company.”
“No, I didn’t even know about the insurance until the man came.”
“The man?”
“The man who brought the money. He came late last night.”
“Let me get this straight. A man came late last night with a check from an insurance company.”
“Not a check, real money. That’s where Jochim is now—he’s putting it in a safe box at the bank.”
“Did the man give you his name?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think so. He was a skinny Anglo in a suit. He gave me an envelope with the money and said now I could take my children and go home. He said that was what Ramón told him he wanted, for us to go home.”
The music changed to “O Holy Night,” and I looked down at my arms to see if my goose bumps were visible. “Do you mind telling me how much money he gave you?”
She leaned forward and in a proud girlish whisper said, “A hundred thousand dollars!”
The likelihood that somebody from an insurance company had hand-delivered a hundred thousand in cash to Paloma was so remote that it boggled my mind that she believed it. On the other hand, it wasn’t much of a jump from believing Gilda had performed satanic rites with Ziggy.
I swallowed the last morsel of meat loaf and said, “I suppose your brother is pleased for you.”
“And for himself too. To tell the truth, Jochim has not been himself here. He has been influenced by bad friends, I think. Now he can start over again.”
I wondered if Jochim was as naive as Paloma or if he was simply taking advantage of a chance to take his family and go home. In either case, I had a feeling that he and Paloma would be a lot safer once they were well away.
Feeling like somebody who’s already seen what’s behind Doors Number One and Two, I said, “Paloma, the man who gave you the money—did he have an Irish accent?”
She looked confused. “He sounded like any Anglo to me.”
I thought about Paco saying people always remember an accent instead of anything else. But maybe Paloma lumped all non-Spanish accents together and just heard Anglo.
“Thank you for meeting with me, Paloma. It has been a big help.”
She smiled shyly, caught in a flood of new self-importance that almost overshadowed her grief.
I couldn’t help myself. I said, “What about the kitten?”
As if she were reprimanding a child, she said, “We can’t take a kitten all that way. We will give it to somebody.”
I said, “You should leave as soon as you can. Whoever killed Ramón may think you know whatever he knew. You could be in danger too.”
She turned her head in slow motion, as if she were afraid her cells would fly away if she moved too fast.
“We are good people! Ramón was a good man! Why has this happened to us?”
I didn’t have any answers. Her questions would be with her forever. They’re the real legacy survivors are left with—the endless questions of why.
In the Bronco, I sat for a second before I pulled out of the parking place. It wasn’t true that meeting with Paloma had been a big help. All it had done was give me a bit of information about the man who had called me to take care of Ziggy. He was either rich enough to pass out envelopes containing a hundred thousand dollars in cash, or he worked for somebody who was.
As I drove away, my mind played hide-and-seek with itself. At least Paloma seemed to have dropped the plan to declaw the kitten, so I could stop worrying about that. She had been so positive about Gilda taking blood from Ziggy that I had almost believed her. At least I believed that she believed it, and that Ramón had told her he’d seen Gilda do it. But I drew the line at the idea that Ken Kurtz had drunk Ziggy’s blood. No way, José. Kurtz might be a weird duck, but he wasn’t weird enough to drink iguana blood.
A little voice in my head said, Maybe he didn’t know he drank iguana blood. Maybe Gilda slipped it to him in one of his health drinks.
“Hunh,” I said, because when my little voice makes a good point, I give it credit.
Ken Kurtz had made a big point of saying Gilda kept him on a strict diet, saying she gave him special drinks she concocted. It seemed too bizarre to credit, but maybe Ramón had actually seen Gilda mix the drinks. Maybe he and Gilda had indulged in a few good laughs at how she was turning old Ken blue with her blood cocktails.
I thought of the missing packages from the refrigerator and said, “Hunh,” again. Could those packages have been vials of blood? Ziggy’s blood? Was that why Gilda had taken them and run, because she was afraid Guidry would find them and know she was playing at being Dr. Jekyll?
Out loud, I said, “Come on, Dixie, get a grip. That’s as nutty as Paloma’s devil rites.”
When I made the rounds to my pet clients, I found that Muddy’s owners had returned early to the rank odor of cat urine and the sight of Muddy on top of their baby grand piano. He had been systematically making deep scratches on the lid.
I didn’t know whether I felt more sympathetic toward them or toward Muddy. He was far too old to be trained not to scratch, and even the most dedicated cat love can lose its hold in the presence of claw marks on the furniture.
I said, “You know, Muddy lived outside for such a long time, he may never make the adjustment to living in a house.”
Mark Cramer said, “It’s too dangerous outside.”
“Here in the city, yes. But maybe you could find a family in the country where he could sleep in a barn or on a porch.”
With her nose wrinkled against the acrid urine odor, Mrs. Cramer eyed the grooves cut into her piano. “He’d be safe from traffic in the country, wouldn’t he?”
I said, “And he could chase moles and rabbits.”
Mark said, “Do you know any farmers who’d like a cat?”
I didn’t but said I’d check with the vets I knew with an offer of a free mouser to a good country home. I left them with my blessings and a bottle of Anti-Icky-Poo spray.
It may have been my imagination, but Muddy’s yellow eyes seemed full of gratitude when I told him goodbye.
I was still in the Cramers’ driveway when my cell phone rang. Not very many people have my cell phone number, so I thought it might be Guidry. But it wasn’t Guidry, and the voice was loud and abrupt in the way of people more comfortable speaking face-to-face.